All the Best Stories
by Daidan-grrl
Summary: Once a young galaxy drifter tossed between stars, Jack would stop at nothing to find the one who could help her keep two feet on solid ground. The search could sink her deep into the criminal underworld, but when her journey ends could she resurface?
1. Thinking back on it

Thanks be to Vin, David and the gang over at Universal- they obviously had the right idea and I'm just shuffling my feet behind them.

* * *

_Prologue  
I'm not myself these days. I don't read half as many of the books that come my way that I would like. I don't trade, I don't fight and I don't pilot anymore. I just think. Whole days gone spent thinking and remembering names that haven't been said in years. Faces that dried up and blew away in clouds of ash before half the adults on this colony were even born. In the Guild days they kept your age in two places- in Cryogenus Shipment files that we called "Cryo Bios", and somewhere called "Paper". One told the truth of your age, and the other was an approximation to make the star-jockeys feel a little more spry. _

_If a lifetime can be recorded twice, can it belived twice?_

**Chapter**  
All the best stories always end with heroes flying off into the sunset- the worst ones keep going long after the victory has passed.

When that pod cocked up and fired off into space I figured us for saved- all heroes because we survived. It was the closest thing I ever got to religion, that day and night after our escape from the black planet- still smelling of the blood of other things. He never said a word, not once for the three weeks between stars. He draped himself in the captain's seat and watched the blackness roll over us, under our feet, by our shoulders. He ate when there was food, he slept when his shift came. When the Merc ship sucked us in he made sure we lived, and said nothing of the blood on my hands afterwards.

I never meant to cry in front of him, tried hard to keep those tears hidden in a cryo-bed pillow, but he still knew. Maybe he could smell the salt or see the dry tracks on my cheeks in the morning, but he never said a word.

When we'd put enough time and distance between us and everything that had happened he touched the skiff down and traded the gilded tin can for boots, food and three seats on three cargo ships docked above the planet.

We stood clutched together in the middle of a space station promenade, clean, dressed, and hollow eyed. I shifted my shoulders in the stiff cloth of a cast-off jump suit, rubbed the short growth of hair at the crown of my head.

He clutched wrists with Imam, bowed, said goodbye. I watched him- the skin at the corners of his eyes gathered secretly when he was hugged close in the older man's good arm. I rubbed dry lips with an absent finger and waited for him to move those few inches and pull me in. I wondered if I would cry, or if he would.

He turned his back and walked to the brothel a few yards away.

"Come my girl," the cleric was quiet, but pulled my shoulders.

"Where's he going?"

"Putting distance between we three to keep us safe. It is the best we can ask of a man like him."

The best we can ask. The best anyone could ask of a killer who can smell the tender places to stab a knife. The best to ask from an animal like Riddick.

When he left me on that street I hated him. I burned furiously to go after him, drag him from the brothel and put my own knife in his eye. He left Imam, but he abandoned me


	2. Stream to River to Ocean

So I'm told that time is supposed to mellow murderous feelings. I got news- its bullshit.  
If I hadn't lost track of that shadow-man, he'd be space trash floating in some alien quadrant.

Fucker.

On our last night together- before the ships would sail and he would scatter us to the wind- Imam pulled me aside quietly to ask if I would come with him and start over; become a distant orphaned niece, an orphaned charge, anything to just start again. He murmured there was more life lived as an honest citizen than a criminal.  
I shrugged his hand from my shoulder - feeling something hot crawl between fingers and behind eyes.  
"Dunno, don't think I will," shivering at the expanse of Imam's kindness, I clenched fists and pitched my voice down low like a Butcher Bay vet, "Ain't got time for the veil-wearing set."

And I ran from him, eyes swimming with confused tears, hunting Riddick.

_It was late, the doors of the women's hostel were closing and I didn't have a swipe card to get in. Some time before, Imam had gone to the Chrislam Mosque to find a cleric who would help us forge travel papers; Riddick staying behind to watch me. He produced a bottle of dark-leaf whiskey that we passed back and forth, my lips burning from the taste that he swigged without passion._

"_We got a big wide galaxy in front of us, don't we?"_

_He nodded, goggles up and eyes flicking around sharp edges of sand-slop buildings. "Always been big," he tipped the bottle back, my fingers fumbled dully for it in the dark._

"_No, but I mean, there's a lot we can do now- us, right?" couldn't drink the whiskey, just gripped the bottle and watched his face._

_Riddick said nothing for a long time, drinking deep and pushing the drink around his mouth._

"_Go with the holy man and get saved, join up with a fleet. Go back to wherever you came from, find your family. Don't follow me."_

_I bit my lip. "I can't leave you."_

_He set his face solid as stone and pulled the goggles back down over his eyes. "More to life than traveling with a dead con."_

"_Not much."_

"_I been doin it six months. That's plenty. Beat it, Jack."_

When I stumbled drunk from the alley and made it far enough away to cry out loud the tears were thick as paste on my cheeks. That night I traded my seat on an outbound freighter headed for Earth and caught a ride to New Mecca.

Lajjun, dead Suleiman's mother, arrived on the next transport from Luna to meet us. She was tall and bronze, smooth as marble with sad dark eyes; her hands steady and cool when she cupped the back of my head and whispered fiercely in my ear that she would be a mother to me, because New Mecca was the place of Hajj- and this was a sign from Allah. Her sharp, thin fingers pressed into my skull, made my hands ball up in surprised pain.

"Tell me, daughter, that you will have me as your mama."

I looked back to the wet eyes of the childless mother, nodding hard in her grip.

Life came to a frozen drift, still as cryo. For two years I lived in the cloisters of a New Mecca village, wore girl's robes and grew my hair long. I was dressed, spoiled, doted on- fulfilling the dreams of a grieving woman who'd secretly wished for a girl when she'd brought up her now lost son. After a time I could feel the scars growing thick and the scabs falling off as Jack disappeared into Lajjun's Daughter. She did not blame me for surviving, and she was nothing if not loving in the face of every day, but Suleiman's ghost was in the room with her whenever things went quiet.

At the urging of Imam, Lajjun sent me to a Guild School to practice sums and read old books, with the understanding I would visit him in the city once a week. At first I was at his gate every afternoon- palming the chime pad and calling into the courtyard almost as soon as the school closed. I had to. If Riddick had been as necessary as air, the glass of tea I drank with Imam was my solid earth. There was comfort seeing him and knowing that not everything had been taken away or had run off on its own two feet.

We never said much after the first few visits, when all I talked about was Riddick or the planet or death in the dark. He stopped answering me when I asked where Riddick might have gone. I stopped talking. When the time was over and the glasses empty, Iman would help me to my feet and see me out. At the door we bowed (he had tried to hug me once and I had gone so stiff he thought I'd been shot) and I would step down onto the street and walk home in the twilight.

Lajjun might have been jealous of the attention, but I didn't care. It felt like he and I were a hundred years older than her, or anyone on the planet- what I had survived was excuse enough for my sullen silence. Every night I dreamed in black and green, saw flashes of shivs and sharp teeth in flare-light, smelled blood. My blood. Felt a hunger and desperation to fly. I saw Riddick, reached out for him and suddenly held the handle of a heavy Merc gun. In the daytime I could hide my fear behind a book or a closed door- but at night I was naked to the spooks still alive behind my eyes.

She wouldn't listen when I told her about our escape, the ships and Mercs, or the Orphan Colony I had run away from in the very beginning. She made more food, found softer cloth, sang louder to cover the dark crackle of my empty voice.

Silenced, dressed like a doll, I began to wear at the seams. My nails were bitten to stubs, hair knotted when she did not dress it. Two summers passed and I would not eat, rubbed my arms to bruising and started picking fights in the street with the skinny boys of market-stall owners.

Ama told me I could be like any other girl- that I was innocent and clean on this planet. She told me that my whole life could disappear- every bad memory gone if I wanted because this is a place of new beginnings. She never asked me why I slept sitting up, never asked why I got into fights with the boys or stole things from teachers at the Guild School. She combed my hair, called me Pretty Girl till I hurled plates and smashed glasses; why did it take so long to do that?

_There are slivers of glass still under the palms of my hands; I can feel them when I make fists. I can see the shattered teacups, the glint of broken light and glitter of water in her tiny garden fountain. I smell the blood in splashes among the shards on the floor as I walked out of the courtyard of Lajjun._

Barefoot, bareheaded and with no escort I went to Imam's home and put a bloody hand against the door. The chip inside chimed softly from the touch, flicked lights on the porch. He filled the doorway like an eclipse.

"Jack, my girl."

My cuts made him flinch; I wiped the blood self-consciously on my robe.

"Sorry."

"No need for apologies," he paused, saying softly, "We are not all cut from the same cloth."

"She's going to need someone else now- she needs another child."

"You are not leaving because of Lajjun."

"No."

Why was I leaving?

My hands were raw. I couldn't touch anything without putting a red stamp where courtesy would be. We stood there a long minute till I jogged my shoulders and padded off into the dark.


	3. Perdition

Not mine, nothing of it is. It's all the baby of a much larger (and posessing of better legal advice) entity. I am in their debt... kind of

That said: graphic violence follows. If you're expecting flowers and roses, perhaps this is not the chapter for you.

* * *

Got a lift on a red-eye to Gamma Gamma, shed those robes for lined thermal trousers, mining boots and a beastly flak vest.  
In the women's showers I slashed off the long Chrislam hair in hunks of dark rope, leaving behind something short and awkward that stuck up in crests and licks. I lurched over a metal sink, gripping the sides with tender hands and staring hard at myself- not a gangly orphan with big eyes and hollow cheeks, but something taller, rounder. Something white with a scar on her chin. I couldn't pass for a boy anymore, or a daughter or an orphan, but what did that leave me? 

It had been almost three years since I crouched in a rocky crevice, gripping a bottle of glowworms and praying for help. I could hear low the whale-song of them in my sleep. They smelled my blood.

A woman in a prospecting crew cornered me in the showers and pushed a bra into my hands. I cocked my head sideways, waited for her to ask for money or put a hand where it didn't belong- but she ducked her head, saying: "Go on baby, wrap 'em up or them bastards won't stop staring." There was something familiar in the wide lips and the quirk of their sparse smile that reminded me of another good woman prospector.  
"Thanks, " I said, not sure of what else I could do.  
"Us women gotta watch out for each other now and then, " she shrugged and patted my shoulder before moving off into the fog of the steam showers.

Alone at in my bunk that night I ran my hands over my body's newly risen places. I wasn't a warrior or a shadow like him, I was a woman, but I could be more. It hummed like electricity under my skin, the promise of something dark that would come like my newly round hips.

I couldn't afford continuous cryo-sleep, only going under every three weeks with the crew and the rest of steerage class. Days of up-time crept by quietly, I would pass hours perched in a large porthole watching stars fly like specks of sand in a hurricane.I thought about finding Riddick or going back to New Mecca, I wondered if there was anything left worth doing that didn't involve one or the other.

A day before we came into port a mate on board cornered me on a lonely gangway. He was a spindle of legs and neck; a wiry, vieny man with a huge Adams apple and thin lips. He pulled in close and unfastened his belt.

"Varney got people in the port can get you work if you're nice."

I backed away, "I don't plan on staying in port."

He inched closer, shrugged off the top of his jumpsuit, shoulders melting out of the suspenders that held his weight-belt in place. "Don't matter your plans, kiddo. Varney can take care of you."

I hate people who speak in the third person.

"I don't need taking care of, shove off." The wall was cold and the bolts were digging into my back like boulders.

Varney arched, the length of his arms and his thin strip of body caging me in. His hand fumbled in the loose fabric of his pants and he grinned, pressing in close, "Any girlie needs taking care of."

This is not how things were supposed to work out.

I was not supposed to be raped by some fucking flunky in the belly of a space freighter. Riddick would never let this happen to me, he would have broken this assholes neck on day one of the voyage and taken the barge for scrap long ago. He would have torn Varney's arms off for twitching in my direction and fed them down that long skinny throat. He would have saved me.

He would at least have spooked the bastard to give me time enough to kill him.

That ragged voice came like a ghost. _Spook him_.

I screamed.

Varney's free hand left the wall to clap over my mouth as the other still fumbled at his crotch. I caught him off balance with a knee to the tenders and cracked his jaw with my forehead. A deep pop showed the jaw offset and teeth jutting sideways in his mouth. Varney reeled back and I followed, a red heat rising behind my eyes and along the arteries of my neck. I plowed two weak fists into his belly and sent the whole body feet-over-ass onto the gangplank. He curled on his side in surprised pain, and I began to kick. Planting deep, full-leg swings of my boots once, then again into his stomach, along the risen ridge of his chest, along his arms and into his back.

"I. Said. Shove. Off. Asshole."

I kicked at him and brought up harsh black bruises. Then the blood began. When skin is pounded enough it grows thin and breaks, Varney's tore away in the places I kicked the most, blue and red and even white began to show.

I stopped then, the black of my boots varnished, falling back against the wall. His dick hung limp on his leg, his arms were splayed along the floor- body twisted and hanging open with trauma. His cheekbones and jaw were smashed and my boots had kicked in his nose. He hadn't fought back quickly enough, probably hadn't been fought before. I had been incredibly lucky.

I was fifteen.

I spent a week hidden away in a cheap motel on-planet. Varney had a couple ducats in his suit and a loaded card brimming with credits for shore leave. It bought gear and a room to sleep whole days away till I couldn't close my eyes anymore. It bought a quick-sheathing knife and two arm-fans, blades that lay flat from wrist to elbow and flipped open like crests. They gleamed with brand-new promise.

On the last gasps of Varney's death money I bought three passages in three directions. If his friends (those charitable bastards with a taste for job-placement) wanted to look for me, the distance I put between us would give me time enough to jump ships somewhere along the way.

Maybe he would have done that.


	4. Width and breadth

Thankful as always to the brains over at Universal and thier tireless efforts to bring good sci-fi to the screen. Thanks also to Hanes for making such snug-fitting tank tops, D. Twohy for casting appropriately, and lastly to the Shipping Guild of the Inter-Galaxy Comission on Inter-Stellar trade, without whom that bucket the Hunter Gratzner would never have found it's way into the meteor field. None of which I have had a hand in, and don't profit from.

* * *

_ Months and months of life lived in the brief terseness of a quickly scrawled paragraph. Even the merciless can have regrets- mine are the hours wasted and the youth lost in the Shipping Lanes. _

I'd come to a slow crawl along a chain of mining colonies, getting into fights with men for money, running from the women because they didn't mind cheating to win. I kept my hair short and wore heavy clothes to keep me looking like an underfed boy. There were scars tracing like a map across my body- high ridges and low valleys dragged along my waist and arms from knives, claws and worse. Two systems behind me I'd lost a chunk of my left palm escaping from a stranger who preferred his girls armed and trapped.

I gave my name as Jack Riddy when anyone asked. I talked to Richard B in my sleep.

The last leg of a free ride dropped me on Adelaide, a glowworm-harvesting planet.

The colonists spoke with the twang of earth-born elders, Oz-landers from a huge island on that flooded planet with rough-and-tumble written into their DNA strings. It was warm there, twilight most of the day and light only for a few hours at a stretch. There were shadows everywhere, and life on the planet had blossomed hungry for darkness.  
The leaves on the trees were leathery and black, but full and spread out thin as flakes of mica. Across the wide-open ranges beyond the small settlements were huge stretches of field and whispering grass. Wildlife with huge dark eyes paced along lengths of fencing that stretched across blurry miles.

I felt a fathomless nostalgia here, running hands along broken stone walls and smelling warm winds heavy with green scent. Dark, thriving Adelaide was a welcoming home for any animal more comfortable after nightfall.

He was there with me, only a few paces back, telling me to keep my eyes peeled for whatever might try to sneak up behind. He had a grip on that bowie-shiv he hid along one massive thigh, watching me walk along the low wall that surrounded the farming-town.

"Ain't right for girls to be out this late," His voice rolled like a distant earthquake along the backs of my arms.

"It ain't right for convicts and escaped killers to follow 'em in the dark."

_Kid, your mouth don't got arms to fight for you._

I smiled. Even when I imagined what he said, it was always worth listening to. In the months since the run-in with Varney, Riddick spoke up more often in the back of my mind. He lived deep down near the base of my neck- talking to me when things were tight and knives were sharp. Some days I reckoned he was just over my shoulder, breathing that sharp, heavy breath and muttering vicious one-liners.

I could practically reach out and touch him, maybe even did now and then. I liked to think that somewhere in that choked-off family tree of mine a Brain Reader had lived and died and passed the Squint to me. Nights like this I could hear his footsteps and smell the sweat on him- He was close, not on-planet but within a few parsecs.

I thought again: If I could find him, I could collect on that bounty and get my last word in. I could tell him to fuck off for saving me and then ditching me like trade fodder. I could put a bullet or a knife in him, or collect his bounty that must be building it's own stock portfolio by now.

I could be just as bad as him. It was in me, and it was slowly creeping out.

Down below a dry field of bright worms oozed along sugar-watered strips. Harvesters would come in the next few hours to scoop them up like fruit and bag them for processing. I felt my eyes burn, hot tears threatening to wet my face.

" I wish you were here, Riddick."  
_No, you really don't._

At sixteen I had spent the end of my childhood hunting a man who'd been soft for all of an hour in his life. I wanted to be near him because that hour of softness had been used up on me. I wanted to kill him because an hour wasn't enough, and I wouldn't stand seeing any more softness in him if it wasn't mine.

In a bar outside Adelaide's capitol (ramshackle, propped up with hunks of it's original Colony Ark) I came across a bounty hunter's radio. It wheezed with solar interference as the clicks of Bounty Updates ticked by. In it's stilted computer voice fugitive names, time spent loose and the prize on their heads read out like an unpunctuated poem:

"Am Quan- eight days loose, 4,000 credits. Aija Tee - two years loose, hunted on Angaloe, killed- body recovered compromised, head worth 500 credits. Sam Amen- five months loose, wounded in shootout, bounty…"

It droned on the bartop between wasted shot glasses sticky with booze; its owner head down amongst the wet and snoring softly with an open stinking mouth. Close to his fingers the radio wound through the lists of galactic felons; rapists, killers, thieves on a grand scale. It ticked off in alphabetical order …A's, B's, L's, M's…. P's… I leaned in close to the man, lifted his stun-stick with a deft finger and listened hard.

Q's, and then:

"Ean Robaq- eighteen months loose, 3,000 credits. Dol Neat- three weeks loose, 200 credits. Richard Riddick- indeterminate time loose- twelve unresolved convictions, bounty talley available at request. O-Ril Xin- seven…"

I almost choked on my beer. He was alive, uncaught, and in the quad.

I remembered it was my birthday.


	5. Polaris

Upon further introspection, your humble narrator admits that the true owners of Pitch, Riddick, Dark Fury and Butcher Bay are mavens of industry. She on the other hand, is more like a janitor of industry.

* * *

_My dreams come fast at night. Grown, vivid, fast-moving dreams that my hands are too clumsy to catch hold of. The ignorance of it leaves me homeless, another failed Orphan from the Colonies.  
These horrible dreams; they leave me sweating in the morning, afraid to get out of bed for the things waiting to grab my ankles under the mattress.  
I start at the beginning every night: on my feet, creeping towards the bulk of a sleeping beast- crawling in and sleeping tight. And you were there, and you were there, and I could feel you even then._

"Lookie Sheila, I don't sell to teeny boppers playing hooky from school, so hop it."

Another cocksure salesman determined to get a high price because of my age; like I wouldn't know better. We were bartering on a remote launch pad on the far side of the colony- somewhere far enough away that bodies aren't counted for weeks and trade moves swifter without documentation. I wanted a skiff he had under a tarp behind the building, the hard part was sounding convincing when saying that 80 credits and a wristwatch would be sufficient.  
The creases at his mouth and eyes folded in a look of disapproval. In a galaxy of pirates and cutthroats apparently the worst crime was to be under 18 and walking free in the afternoon.

"I'm not asking you to _sell_, mate, I'm asking you to bargain."

I let the zipper on my jump-vest slide, leaned over the counter and didn't smile.

_Don't smile; they're harder to fight off when they think you want it. This is business. He'll loose an eye before getting you into bed- or against a wall or however these marks do it._

Nothing is sacred in the pursuit of merchandise.

He coughed delicately, hocked a glob of yellow onto the floor and popped a hand-rolled into his mouth. It dangled from a dry lip and left a black shadow across his chin.

"I got truck wheels older than you."

"I'm not looking for a sweet-16 party, pops."

He didn't look away from my face as he lit the cigg and took a deep drag. His pewter eyes looked past my thinned lips and hard stare. Something was wrong; this wasn't about the sale any more. My legs felt hot and ready to run, the blade I kept on my thigh was cold and close.

Deep down, at the stem of my brain, something twitched.

"You won't be able to kill him, you know."

I went cold.

Just my luck to spend a year bouncing around the galaxy and end up on the wrong end of a Brain Reader. They were bloodlines with telepathy- called the Squint- that had been harnessed by Guild researchers, hyper-developed then declared illegal after the abilities proved too invasive. It was true, too- some Squints embedded themselves in governments, led coups on the more rural colony planets, used their talent to take what they wanted with less blood but more zeal than any of the Guild Ministers.  
The joke told in lonely bars was that the politicians couldn't take the competition and needed to take out the other team. And it had been done with staggering delight.  
Following the Guild edicts, Readers were hunted like criminals- bounty hunters and Mercs with licenses were given free reign to kill Squints on sight, or sell them to prison-planet wardens. Those who escaped got bitter, went into hiding, became ordinary people. Became colonists.

He was digging in deep- reading from the bottom up and I was too scared to move. I had never been too scared to move.

"He's not worthy of your passion." He said, the broad strokes of native-dialect dropping from his voice as he came from around the counter towards me. "You want him dead, you want me dead. You would kill me for the keys to my truck."

Sweat pooled under my arms, made my feet cold with panic. The Squint could out me- have me arrested and collect bounty on my head if he could get anything good on my name. Varney's id patch flashed behind my eyes.

His face lit up.

I thought about the broken lace I'd replaced on my boot that morning- the cheap potcheen wiped from my mouth, now dried on the back of my hand. He came in close, gripped my arm and smiled into my face.

"Don't hide," there was a pressure building at my temples- he was looking for names.

Imam, Captain Fry, Lajjun- the tiled pool in her courtyard scattered with glass.  
The depth of space as it yawned and swallowed me whole.

I thought of the glowworms, and then of glowpacks, the rip and crack of bones as flying monsters rippled the air with their calls –

Pieces of Paris P. Ogilvy left in a trail for us to find. Hassan pulled up a wall by his neck. Shazza coming apart in the air, still screaming- I screamed with her.

He choked, fell back against the bar with a hand clapped over his eyes- I'd tapped him into a deep memory and let all the pain come through at once. In the breath he took to recover I brought my hip-knife up to his throat.

"Stop!"

"You first. Look deep enough and see this won't be my first time."

His jaw tightened against the knife point, for a breath I thought I would get away with the bluff- but the tickle in my brain came pack with a push so hard my eyes watered.

"Were you as scared then as you are now?"  
He laughed with a harsh pop and pushed back against the blade, "You've been here before- but this isn't where you want to be." A large, meaty hand rose up to my face, "Name's Snow. You?"  
Furious and defeated I chewed my bottom lip, watching the twitch of his open palm and fingers, "Can't you take a look and find out for yourself."  
His smile faded, "Could, but what kind of gentleman would I be? Women gotta have some mystery." He waved his hand more insistently in my face.  
"Jack," I said.  
"Got a last name to go with it?"  
"Just. Jack." My shiv dropped, but didn't disappear.  
He grinned broadly and grabbed my free hand, "Excellent! Pleasure's all mine. Thanks for not killing me."  
I fought the curl of my lip, he only smiled and clapped my shoulder.  
"Right-o then young lady, lets talk about your boat."

An hour later in the settlement cantina we faced each other over cups of heavy black coffee. Snow's legs were long, awkwardly bent at strange angles to accommodate the low café table. After forking over the dregs of my last credit card as well as the Universal cash I kept in my boot the ship was mine- sight unseen. With a cheery grin and a surprisingly hard clap on the shoulder, Snow had suggested we have a coffee to celebrate. Swallowing the bile in my throat, I tried not to think how badly I hated coffee.

"You only ever had the stuff on those inter-stellar freighters. Anyway, I have to spend those creds of yours somehow."

His fingers were surprisingly delicate with the enamel mug, holding it away from his lips and taking small, quick sips. My fingers drummed impatiently on the table top, making my untouched cup and saucer rattle.  
My host tilted his cup upside-down, took the last few drops and set it back on the table inside it's saucer. "My day, young people took what their elders gave 'em and said thank you."  
He looked pointedly down at the coffee.  
"Not thirsty."  
Snow snorted, "Bloody right your not, but that café set your creds back 3 a pop, drink it up or I will and you'll be paying extra on that ship."

It was bitter velvet on my mouth, hot and unsweetened with a decidedly metallic edge. The brew-pot it was poured from must have been made of-  
"Tin, badly forged tin I'd wager."  
I spat the drink out in surprise, "Christ! I didn't know you were reading me! Can't I fucking drink alone!"  
With equally delicate motions, he dabbed away the brown droplets on his cheeks.  
"Can't taste a goddamn thing, not since Bounty Mounties caught a clutch of me and mine in a corner and gassed us. Killed the lot of them, took my taste."  
"Everyone died? Everyone but you?"  
He shrugged, folding the napkin into a star and laid it next to his cup. "Eh, win some loose some. Fact is the closest thing I get to a good meal is listening in on the wanker eating it next to me."  
I drew patterns on the plastic with puddle drink. "Thoughts aren't public conversations."  
"That's what the Guild said too." He grunted, scowled at the napkin and dashed if off the table. "E-fucking-nuff kiddo. I'm not about to dig it all up again, " he fumbled in his pocket and produced a much-folded piece of heavy paper. "You want a stake in this, you got it."  
I unfolded an old blueprint for a short-wave skiff, fast and sleek with all the Guild Branding taken off. I was as interested in the drawing as I was with the paper it was on- there was so little of it to go around out in the boonies. I had heard of whole books of the stuff but never seen more than a few sheets at a time. A product of the Orphan Colonies, I had grown accustomed to view-screens with touch-interface for news relays and access panels for private information. The paper was like a rare bird in my hand, making the ship seem like an omen (if I believed in it).  
I looked up directly into Snow's flat gray stare. "What's she called?" I said breathlessly.  
He smirked, a salesman who knew he'd sealed the deal. "The Figurer."  
My free hand shot across the table- "I'll take it."  
We shook hard on it, my fingers running back and forth over the creased sheet in my lap.  
"Welcome aboard captain."  
My hand went limp in his grip, "Captain- do I have a crew?"  
"Just me, you're humble navigator."


	6. Harbour

_The farther to reach, the longer to recoil..._

I have given more time to this than much else since; children, friends, the money and the bounty and the pain of loss. In my mind, it all becomes one large animal with no teeth or claws… but a strong venom that eats my heart on lonely days. How could anything ever return to its first footprint after stretching so far?

"NO. NO, ABSOLUTELY NOT!"

"You won't know what to do when your ass is in the seat, " he called after me from the café table. In the dry afternoon my boots left a trail of dust on the street as I stormed off towards the inter-settlement transport.

Don't fucking care, I thought, Can learn without the friggin extras.

The stop was empty and the next wagon not due for ten more minutes.

Snow was behind me in a matter of heartbeats, his weathered hand gripping my elbow fast. "Hear me out, kiddo-" I shouldered from under him and turned on a heavy heel.

"I bought your damn crate, get the fuck out of here."

He came in close, fixing me with blank eyes as he said softly: "I need to get off this planet. That ship needs four hands and two bodies…" his body blocked the road- in the far distance I saw the hard shine of sunlight on the windows of a transport truck.

We stared- still silently bargaining, but he didn't reach into my mind. He respected me, or was afraid of what I had inside yet to be seen.

My lips set firm, "Give me half my money back and stop calling me kiddo."

His hand was in my face again, warm and dry with deep lines that wavered beneath my nose, "Deals a deal, missy, lets get 'er off the ground."

We launched the ship at dawn in the direction of the rising sun, with every shield and mask up to hide from the watchers down below.

Mid-jump between lanes something sparked and fizzled, laid flat and died.

Seventeen days adrift, out of range of the closest sun-fed system, The Figurer's main drives slowly powering up on the dusty rays of a few close stars. In the bunk behind me Snow was asleep, his heavy fists curled at his chest like snakes.

We never said much past polite conversation, since that first meeting when he had plunged his hands into my mind Snow had kept his distance. I caught him sometimes staring at the ropes of scars along the backs of my arms.

He could sleep like the dead, but the fear of being stranded (again) was eating at my muscles and making me twitch. As hours were eaten by days I stayed blindly awake while he shifted under the knots of cryo-feed tubes.

There was a tic developing behind my right eye- a flutter light as an insect wing.

I flipped dead levers aimlessly; pumping buttons with hope the long rest had them ready to put us back into carrier lanes running in threads of radar and static between outposts. A tiny blue beacon perched at the very top of the control panel flashed off-off-on-off-off-on in the quiet code of machines- something Snow had rigged before turning in.

"Give it some time, girly," he smiled wanly, "Someone will find us when we're wanted."

I sagged back into the captain's seat and crossed arms over chest in an empty try for rest.

Soon, kid, soon enough. Riddick growled beneath my thoughts.

Sitting in front of a bank of cracked dials and gaff-taped levers, I thought twice on the Squint's offer. He'd omitted the Figurer's frayed wiring, slap-dash radio echoing system, and navs useful as mittens underwater. The radio was tinny – picking up more sunflare and static than voices or code- it's refusal to talk left the ship and it's two bodies swaddled in timelessness- how many days had really passed that these failing computers had forgotten to record?

It didn't matter, I was in the stars again and back on the hunt- the hunger of it eating me more ferociously now that we were on the trail. A month had gone since I'd heard Riddick's name over the bounty frequencies, the sliver of news becoming a wide scythe as I carved away at charts and maps. Snow had tried to ask me a few times about Riddick- even probed into the top few memories I hadn't held close to the pain of the dark planet (the only safe guard I had against him was his fear of the things I had already seen).

Chin notched in my chest, I thought clearly for the first time since leaving my robes in a puddle on Helion Prime. What was I worth as a run away, as a half-hearted hunter full of scars and bad memories? I thought of the arm-fans packed cross-wise in my satchel, of the dried Anelian thumb (knotted in a swatch of it's former owner's clothing) buried deep in the bottom of my bag. Trophy hunter, Orphan, trash drifting in and out of real life.

Was I only as good as the personal mission I'd put myself on?

_… what if I never …_

For the first time in a handful of days I fell asleep… and dreamed.

_Of rain. Long-fingered rain reaching from some pitch-black sky and stretching down through me to the center of the planet. The shine of polished skin and sodden clothes, an arm, a leg, the cake of black mud on prison-issue boots._

I sighed in my sleep and burrowed deeper into the feeling of the wet falling, dressing, soaking me. I could smell the thirsty earth, rich promising silt.

I _miss_ rain.

An alarm blared to life- howling to make my teeth grind. Life fizzled through half-charged components; screens popped on with a scent of ozone in the cabin, the hot smell of blood as cryo-chemicals drained away from my second mate and the tubes wound back under the bed. In a windmill of legs Snow spun from his bunk, running barefoot across the grating and pushing me away from the control panel.

Still sleep warm, and eyes half open he pulled down a view panel and tapped codes onto the screen. Numbers tumbled across the field of blue and he pushed out a deep sigh.

"About fuckin time. We're saved."

I wondered who would answer a skiff's distress call so far out in the boonies.

The prow of a large ship bowed into view from above us. The glint of an acid-etched figure-head bounced the dull starlight into Snow's eyes, who twisted his mouth gratefully.

"Can't believe he heard me this far out."

He pulled forward in his seat and tapped away at a keyboard, bringing up long scrolling lists of information, making commands to begin docking. Steadying herself for what must be an almighty jolt, straps yanked tight with a machine's disregard of a body's comfort. My fingers pulled at crisp nylon weave where it bit into the soft of my neck and arms. Our viewers flickered in dusky starshine and Figurer rattled as tenuous beams laced together, Snow smiling to himself while switches and levers pulled themselves across the boards. Over our com system a distant voice crackled softly.

"Ahoy der, Figurer, fine shape you're in."

"Hoy yourself, Albo- got a few more plates for breakfast?"

Snow's eyes were folded deep with laugh lines as he shouted replies to the cobweb voice of the other ship. They traded code – speaking in a dancing, winding pidgin that put faded images of old-movie pirates onstage in my imagination.

"Mind you," Albo's voice was a far-off smile,"That wreck you're floating in must be sapped for power- our clocks are planning supper."

I hadn't managed a word in the time since this began, now swung my head drunkenly to Snow's seat and found it empty.

Where had my self-preservation vanished to? I wondered if maybe he'd put some clamp on the part of my brain that commanded movement, feared for a moment that this had been a set-up from the start, felt cold pricks on my arms and legs at the thought of being trapped by a bounty hunter.


	7. Contact

Copernican, Albo's ship, was a long-retired freighter – another charity wreck stripped of its Corporation brands and salable, unnecessary technology. Its thin-skinned hull was a haze of blossoming rust spots and painted-over logos. The bulk of it ballooned, zeppelin-like, over the gathering arms hung underneath, giving it the nervous look of a wallflower at party's edge.

An ancient gantry pulled Figurer close, opening the ship's belly to tuck us deep inside. On board, Snow busied himself packing and tidying the cabin as I watched the needle of our grav meter wind down.

Still in shock, I drew my knees onto the seat and hugged them close to my chest.

"Another squint."

_It isn't an ambush. _He said behind my eyes.

'I warned you about that." I grunted, shaking my head to clear the echo of him from my mind.

"Aye Aye, captain." he chirped, his back to me as he straightened loose possessions.

I would have called him a smartass if my voice was strong enough to carry over the grav meter's whine.

Outside, the ship's doors sealed in a fanfare of spinning lights and whooping alarms. Pipes hissed with pressure and atmosphere and instantly our small space became heavier, crisper.

An access panel blinked on, piping video of the docking bay to my command-screen. A older man, bent over a makeshift cane and trailed by a strange dog, shuffled into the bay and palmed an access panel. His face looked every inch as old as his ship in close-up on screen. He squinted into the display before showing a warm, lopsided grin.

"Must be her captain. All's welcome aboard if you're packed."

I sighed deeply before flicking the microphone on. "Hoy sir."

Already dialling our doors open, Snow hitched his rucksack over a shoulder and hummed softly.

"You'll like it here, it's quiet."

I bet. I thought bitterly. I'd heard too much talk on the colony of those few strange ships full of readers. Word was most of the squints had forgotten how to speak – being a few generations deep in nothing but squinting mind to mind had left them strange and silent. Hollow.

One rail-thin girl who'd hunched in the bunk below mine claimed to have been on board a squint vessel before.

She'd been slow to talk at first, that scrap of a child pale as dry earth and sky. I'd already been in the colony a few months when her group arrived. At first she'd sucked her fingers, staring faraway with watery grey eyes.

"They got a wind around 'em."

In the cold still of late night, her voice – soft, leaf dry– floated through my pillow:

"No one talks, just stares... once you ent payin' heed they jump into your brain with crazy things..."

I held my breath, thinking at first she'd fallen asleep. But then:

Animals walking upright, big blobs of colour, fireworks, anything. They try 'n make normal people crazy since they're jealous of us not being tracked and killed."

She could have been lying, making up a fantasy like the rest of us to scar over the abandonment that landed us in those cots.

But as Albo's cataract-blue eye filled the lens and my screen, I found myself wondering if that girl had been speaking the truth all along.

I found myself frozen in place, gripped with fear

Pistons screeched as the port slid back, the back of my chair danced back as someone behind swung it around, brought me face to face with a blanched, withered face alight with bright blue eyes.

"She's naught a pup, Snow. I thought you was transportin' a tiger or a tri-planet killer."

My body was my own again, hands flying out in panic first for this old crow in front of me, then for the buckles that held me to the seat.


	8. Depth

_Cold sand of a dark beach. The lap and hiss of waves crawling back and over sea-polished stone. Foam rolled up and over the toes, ankles, top laces of his boots. Looking out to sea, the blinking lights of artificial islands danced, competed with stars. _

_And I, still on the dry shore, watched him walk out to those lights, slip under the waves. Become the vast deep of the ocean._

* * * *

I was unconscious, floating in the fathomless dark of closed eyes.  
My arms, hands and feet were numb, buzzing. There were no voices, but I could feel language all around me in the dark – a boiling echo that bounced back and forth in the bowl of my reclined skull. Talk without words of me, of my clothes and weapons. Of the bristled shock of dark hair growing around my ears.

Snow was close by, his cough loud in the quiet dark space I waited in. And then a brush of warm bunched fingers on star-cold skin.

I knew if I could just flicker my lids the world would return. I knew it, but I couldn't do it.

_Would've expected more from a good shot like you._

I can't see. I thought it softly – words grey as old cloth.

_'Course not – you're twice as much trouble when you've got eyes. _

Y'think they'll let me up?

_Who'd let something like you on two feet after that swing at their honcho?_

Think I'll live?

Riddick said nothing.

It could have been a few hours or a month of that same powerless wait, then needles of light blinked up around me. The room was steely panels of scuffed metal. Grates sighed softly, pumping a dust-smelling tide of scrubbed air over me. Plastic zips held my wrists tight to the rails of a bolted bunk, army-issue blankets piled over my stomach and legs. My own bare white toes wiggled from far down the bed.

And wide, dark eyes watched from elbows resting at my knees. She was my age, a year or two older at most, dark curls loosely pulled from her face in a soft plait. Pink ribbon lips.

A smile.

"You're awake." her voice was easy, polished. Straight teeth with rounded edges.

"I am." Me, the grating torn edge of blown-out tank armor. Scars purple and brown in a thready net cast across bare skin. Made hers glow.

"Call me Kai."

"Jack."

Kai tilted her heart shaped face, a soft smile curling under round cheek."That's not a girl's name, Miss."

I knew that. Always knew it. But I owned it and that made it mine.

I missed the pulse and flair of her nostrils, but felt a starburst sting as she laughed, "We'll have to get your real name then."

Her long arms poured towards me, pulling at the stiff blankets in a strange creep – but the hatch of my room wrenched open in that moment and Snow's face filled the frame.  
"Kyra. Leave it."

She paused – a cat in mid pounce – smiled even wider before patting my leg and standing. She flowed out of the room, brushing her shoulder across Snow and ducking face unreadable as he shut the door behind him and took her seat by me.

"She was on watch – I wasn't sure when you'd be up."

"Funny, I don't remember falling asleep." I flexed my hands and pulled hard, the rails jumping in their fittings with a deep clunk.

He rubbed his neck, turned away for a moment. "That wasn't supposed to happen–"

I snorted.

"That way. Wasn't supposed to happen _that way._"

"What."

He sprang back, stooping his tall frame into the shadows of the unlit ceiling. "Jack – fuck sake girl – you went for the skipper with both hands! Almost took his eye with you!"

"I thought I was the captain of my ship."

"Yar, but it's – " he stabbed a hand through his hair. "I got you off Adelaide – put you in the shipping lanes, right?"

My mouth pressed into a firm line. Could feel the bite of the zip cutting my skin.

"I get you into open space, Figurer eats it. We need help. My kind aren't far – I save both our hides and you think I'm trying to sell you for bounty."

I can't read minds, but I can see right through that bullshit.

His face pulled in annoyance. He'd heard me clear enough. "Look, you're safe. You're protected and we have a deal."

"Then what's next?"

The door pulled back again, and that odd leggy dog trotted in. It bumped the tips of Snow's fingers with it's sharp, shaggy muzzle before settling between the legs of Kyra's chair. His master followed, scraping his cane along the floor.  
**_Now, Miss, we make our introductions properly._**


	9. As it was

_As can only be done retrospectively, I swear that if I had known then what I know now..._

... it would have changed nothing at all. 

* * *

They had been out in the stars for almost fifteen years, Albo himself hadn't set foot on ground in almost as long. During the last cull he'd drawn back into the hard shell of his ship – created an ark to save the last few squints in his sector before the corporation mercenaries moved in.  
There had once been almost one hundred men, women and children on Copernican – friends and refugees who became family. Now there were only a handful left, the others taken, killed or kidnapped by mounties.

As the story flowed into my mind, I saw faces and moments of painful separation. Hollow eyes, tears, the curled fingers of a lifeless hand upturned on pavement.

Albo stared, boring a single nerve-wide hole through me. The warmth of his voice gave a surprising, youthful heat to the words he said aloud.  
"We're few, and we're quiet. You're with us as Snow's guest and we'll give you the courtesy of that."

He drew very close, putting his hand over my bindings. "What happened on your ship was poor manners on my part. But you're on notice, girl. Put us in danger, and I put you out. Entirely."

As he spoke I felt the zips loosen, the plastic go brittle and snap, freeing me. Unlike my last surprise though, I was still.  
Albo's grip lifted and he smiled warmly.

"Now that's settled, we've got a dinner on when you're ready."

He stood, rewrapped a dun coloured blanket around his thin shoulders and left, whistling for the dog with a high, thin note.  
I sat up, slow and creaking, rubbing my wrists. Already the red marks were swelling and red with irritation. Snow still in the corner, his wide shoulders pinned to the corner as he watched.

"Don't need to tell you I'll behave."

"No, you don't."

"Guess I ain't captain afterall."

He coughed to cover a guilty agreement. How could it be that someone with the genes for reading minds could be read so easily?  
He helped me to my feet, finding my boots and coverall in quiet.

I laced the boots slow, feeling a weird pause in my muscles and his eyes burning my shoulder blades.

"What happened there, when you attacked him... it was just protection." He stammered, stopped, folded his fingers together tightly till the skin went white.  
"A burst – a quick flash to stun you – it wasn't supposed to be so hard."

"Things never go according to plan, eh?" I said to my shoe, skin crawling and red mist gathering at the corner of my eyes. Outnumbered, again. Now, worse off than ever and helpless as a raggedy doll. I felt an urge to fight my way free – grab the Figurer and blast an escape hole in their hull.

"You can't – she's not fit to travel for a few days at least."

Now I looked at him – let him see anger just waiting to explode. Began to swim in a sea of nightmare memories – fangs, midnight coos, huge leathery white wings slicing the air as half a screaming torso was lifted...

His shoulders jigged and Snow put his palms out, taking my hands in his as the silent words poured.

**_That man you need – I promise you'll find him. You will have your ship and your quest, just no trouble for us._**

"No, no trouble. I leave when the boat's ready. But if I've lost the trail..."

**_How could you lose anything with one of us looking?_**


	10. Feast

The mess hall was a cathedral hidden in the heart of Copernican. Nests of tunnels wound tightly around this mighty space so that it could stretch higher than most trees I'd seen.

Bathed in echoes, the room was a luxurious waste of oxygen and light so bold that it had to have been taken from a Very Important Person in command of more power than sense. Maybe a chancellor or even a prime minister.

"A sector warden, actually," Snow whispered – his voice a hush as we both worshiped the open air.

"Albo took command when I was just small; won it in a fight from ship smugglers."

"It was a chess match!" the old man's voice hooted, "Dammit all, Snow, you got a voice travels a light year."

From the far end of the long hall an arm waved us to the table. Satinwood, crisp tablecloth and proper plates – not trays – had been laid. A clutch of squints already seated weaved in animated, silent, conversations. A tall woman, her thick hair illuminated under the lights, motioned us to the seats closest hers. Her lips were a hard, colourless slash – things unused to pliant working.

Along the spot lit-length of bright white service I could feel eyes and minds flicking over me. There were maybe fifteen, twenty here. Whispers of shadow and light glimmered behind my eyes – not words, but hopes, flashes of texture and emotion. All giving me the same hair-crawling message: _**silencepleasesilencenotalesnodangertellnonesilence**_

And it felt for all the world like a soft lifting wind along my arms and skin.  
Turns out the mad orphan all those years ago had some grip on the truth.

In a singular fluid voice Albo first said, then _showed, _that in initial culls the mercs cut throats and tongues to mark squints they couldn't carry back for rewards. And, he added – tapping his legs, which were not legs after all but two jointed steel rods – those who did not go quietly lost more than voices. Without words from the parents, children never learn. And so a new generation came up speaking in colours and sensation from behind wondering eyes.

Down the end of the table I caught the bottomless stare of an iron-haired boy who nodded, telling me bright yellow light and a scrap of laughter from a past sunny day. It was not a punishment to have no words – it was a new language.

My voice was a harsh, scuffed grate on the silent dinner party, "I'm sorry for that. It weren't my people but – like – it was our sort..."  
Snow shook his head, moved his hand to cover my own – stopping as he realised what he was about to do and I was left with the ghost-warmth of a hovered palm.

Plates were passed in clinking quiet. Albo's old dog pushed a shaggy head between knees and chair legs, wagging and panting for attention.

There were no words, but an operatic amount of food. I stared in stunned reverence at the wealth of it all – salads and hot bowls of sauces and stews that made me reel from the smell. Whole plates heaped with scarlet radishes, slick onions, glossy green cucumbers and skin-tight tomatoes blushing a high red and twinkling buff seeds under the rich light. Glass jars recycled as mugs caught the deep plums of syrupy juice and clarifying cold teas. No meat, but thick bean paste fried to a consistency that held dressings but melted under knives.

The woman at my elbow flickered a look into an oxygen garden at the crown of the ship– a breathing, humid paradise of resurrected vegetables and fruits.

Tastes, herbs. Salts and peppers and sweet and sour burned my tongue and throat after what I only knew as years of blank nutrient pastes and cloudy colony water. Beside me Snow sighed, eyes shut as I knew he savoured my dinner. I wondered who else tasted my meal.

A spark then – a match struck in the dark – memory of the dark-haired Kyra and her creeping, strange hunger I knew had little to do with nutrition.

Tension in Snow's arm vibrated the space between us, then stillness and cold. If I had looked up from my plate I would have seen the eyes at the table all darting, wondering, fixing on me and flitting away. Something strange was unsaid there – an agreement made that I had no party to. It was not fair.

My fork dropped, it's heavy handle like a gong or gunshot.  
"What's the story then, folks." I was sharply aware of how easily they would be able to smell panic or fear, an uncertain heartbeat or a flutter of my hand.

"No story, kiddo. We don't..." he tried again, "Kyra is – _special._"

My mouth tasted vinegar and dust. For all their wish for my silence, it seemed there was an awful lot of noise floating around. I balled my free hand into a fist, laying the fork down and pushing away from the table.

"I think till there's more talk about the things I need to know here, I'll just keep myself to myself."

I nodded briefly to Albo before pushing my chair out maybe a little too far and taking my leave.


	11. Whom

_In the bulky strangeness of **then** I remember time sliding, molding to the touch. Sometimes now, in the dark, I wake to find myself reaching up from the bed, clawing at... at what precious peace it all seemed to be. At the possibility of a happy an ending that skirted around the things I would, actually, be required later to do: killing, barter.  
Things I did – not to win, but to survive. _

"So, why Snow?"

I tilted the welding mask back and rested cold elbows on Figurer's smeared metal. We were sweating through repairs in the main hold, artfully making do with an almighty patchwork across the skin and innards of my ship.

Snow, patching a snarled mat of frayed console wires on the other side of the ship, was visible only from the knees down.  
I saw his feet go still, a heel twitch in the sudden silence. He'd become my host and sitter, keeping me occupied and away from the others – having now been onboard for the guts of a month and never once seen the scattered crew again.

"Why... Snow? Why my name?"

"Why any of your names here, Snow, Vast, Gyre..." Vast, a tall and quiet woman with knobbled wrists and a dotted tattoo between her fingers. Gyre, her son and the boy with gunmetal grey hair whose reassurance that first night at dinner still hung warm in the back of my mind... (if Snow heard that, he said nothing).

He tilted around the bowed end of the ship to meet my eyes, shrugging before falling back into his work."Dunno why – sounded good I guess. Lived on Adelaide years kicking up dust and sweating like a pig. Snow just felt good to say... like a wish."

"What was it before?" I asked.

Snow's tools dropped into a box on the floor – a sour signal he was finished with repairs for the day. "Sometimes there's no reason at all to the names we give ourselves. So bottle it."

We were quiet, watching each other. "I'm not trading life stories, Jack."

_Probably be a fuckin' sob story anyway. You got time to cry it all out for a stranger?_

Riddick again. Always when I paused on the knife-edge he crept into my ears like a shadow. I was beginning to wonder if he was still a real flesh and blood thing or if I was chasing static.

Was I still chasing?

In my berth after lights out I lay in the dark, trying hard to focus on him. If i could just know again, the way I had in that merc bar, if I could get free of here...

_Come find your bogey man and kill those nightmares once and for all._

"Is that what you are, now?"

_That what you wanna make me?_

A ringing knock on my door, the sound scratching my teeth and making me jump.

"Miss Jack, is it just you in there?

I pulled the blankets a little closer. Kyra. She had vanished into the winding tunnels of the craft almost immediately following our first meeting. Since that moment at the dinner, she'd not been seen or heard again... something I was more glad of than I'd ever admit.

In a honey voice that could melt iron. "Is there anything at all I can do?"

I could feel the heat of her breath against the door, she was smiling.

"Maybe we could... talk. Share the stories knocking around in that head of yours?"

Another pause, and then:

"Maybe chat with whoever it is you've got in there with you..."

_There's a wolf at the door, little red. _

The sharp edge of my fan blades blinked to mind. The soft curves of taanite ore sang quietly, like this: _blood and blood and blood..._

Outside, she sighed with a sad note, "Oh, we've gotten off on the wrong foot. But we'll soon set things right."

Footsteps rang on the grating as she made her way back to the crew quarters. In my mind I could still feel a powerful pressure like the hard search Snow had tried only once, and I'd taught him to stay away.

But Kyra didn't seem interested in lessons.


End file.
